Browsed byCategory: Fear

No kidding: “America and its young people live in an age of near-constant bad news. OregonLive, like other news websites, is replete with headlines that stoke young people’s existential fears: stories highlighting climate change, mass shootings, political hate and the like.”

We actually live in the best of times with plummeting global poverty and illiteracy rates, rising incomes and middle income lifestyles that exceed the super wealthy of just 100 years ago. In the U.S., crime, including violent crime, is in a long term declining trend. But you probably do not know this because of the media’s focus on gloom and doom.

News and social media are literally killing our youth via increasing suicide rates as they are flooded with unnecessary fear mongering. The constant negativity is damaging – yet the media will continue down this path even while acknowledging their own role.

The Amazon fires pseudo news panic illustrates how easy it is to throw an election via social media

Social media is a frictionless platform for the dissemination of propaganda messaging. Seeing what just took place in the past few days, can you imagine the firepower about to be unleashed during the next national election in the U.S.? The brutal propaganda messaging on social media threatens to take down democracy.

Social media has gone insane over fires in the Amazon area of Brazil, with most posts being wrong

Social media has gone utterly insane about fires in the Amazon region of Brazil-virtually all of them contain false information. NASA points out that over their 15 year satellite-based observing history, the fire situation in the Amazon is average. But the falsehoods have blown up to the point that internationally known politicians are calling for action!

Social media is a bonfire of idiocy.

How online retailers use “dark patterns” tricks to manipulate you into buying soon!

Only 8 left in stock? Bogus claim to urge you to “Buy now!” “Sale ends soon!” after which the sale continues forever. “25 people just viewed this hotel room” – nope, that’s a random number to get you to “jump on the bandwagon” and act quickly.

Internet memes live forever: Home Depot is no longer using neonicotinoids on plants

Third party companies offer to install solar PV arrays on your home and promise to save you money on your monthly electric utility costs. Bloomberg found they use a mix of false assertions, lies, cherry picking and fear as sales methods, to persuade homeowners to sign up and lease the solar PV system for decades. Over time, the lease costs increase such that the homeowner spends far more in the future, while the third party company collects large government subsidies. Few homeowners understand what they got in to. When they go to sell their home, the lease is transferred to the buyer – in effect, TPO solar PV arrays become a dead weight on the home’s future sales potential, particularly to informed buyers who understand the game.

Controversial “viral” video clip was pushed on social media by “a network of anonymous” and apparently fake accounts

Social media is the new battleground. It’s being used to push people over the edge, to threaten violence against others, and in some cases, leading to actual violence. A controversial video clip that spread online in the past day was pushed by what appears to have been a fake account.

Obamacare was judged unconstitutional by a Federal judge today. In response, a number of politicians made comments such as this one: “Today’s ruling is an assault on 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions”. That claim, however, is false. It is not well known but HIPAA (passed in 1996) provided protections for many, and about half of the U.S. states enacted various protections against pre-existing condition exclusions. This was hidden by design. By implying (falsely) that 1/3d of the U.S. population would be denied health insurance, the method of fear is used to create political support.

Clarke, club president of CARE, said his interest is transmitting using LP or “low power” apparatus. John Laybourne, vice president of the Rogue Valley Amateur Radio Club, used a high-power 10,000 watt setup needing a gas-powered generator for the off-the-grid event. Source: In era of Wi-Fi and LTE, ham radio enthusiasts don’t mind a challenge | The Columbian Depending on license class, band and geographic location, the limits are 5 watts, 50 watts, 200 watts or 1,500 watts peak-envelope-power, not…

At a prior meeting, Turnbull told the reporters: “Our job is to really drop the bucket further down the well than anybody else to understand what are these really deep-seated fears, concerns. “It is no good fighting an election campaign on the facts, because actually it is all about emotion.” Source: Cambridge Analytica Stage-Managed Kenyan President’s Campaigns: UK TV | Top News | US News The most powerful tool in the propagandists tool kit is fear. The sole purpose of…

We’ve all seen news quotes like this one: Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight on Thursday amid increasing worries over nuclear weapons and climate change. Source: Doomsday Clock ticks closer to apocalypse and 1 person is to blame The Doomsday Clock is a propaganda tool that allegedly represents how many minutes we are from Armageddon and the end of life on earth. It works as propaganda through its ease of understanding, and its appeal to authority (it’s…

A UCLA student journalist reported a story using a photo of a sign in front of a student housing home that said “No Blacks Allowed”. Russian trolls picked up the photo, extensively edited, and then posted it on a Russia run propaganda group called Blacktivist, to emotionally target members of the group. The FB group had 360,000 “Likes”, which was more than the Black Lives Matter group itself. But Blacktivist was a fake group designed by Russian trolls to racially…

CNN speaks with people unwittingly used by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency. Source: The unwitting: The Trump supporters used by Russia – Feb. 20, 2018 CNN itself covered a rally sponsored by the Internet Research Agency and falsely reported that it was organized by a 20 year old. CNN does not mention that it too was unwittingly used by Internet Research Agency, publishing news stories sourced to Internet Research Agency social media propaganda. Nor does CNN mention that its coverage…

A photographers notices that almost all photo journalism awards go to photographers who focus on pain and suffering, giving us a warped view of the world around us: Media reinforces and shapes public perception whether intended or not. And the same photos and photographers tend to win multiple awards in a given year, thus generations of photojournalists are led to believe that contest-worthy images must conform to a certain look-and-feel. This isn’t just conjecture. A well-known documentary photography who eschews…